title: Suboptimal evolutionary novel environments promote singular altered gravity responses of transcriptome during Drosophila metamorphosis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Previous experiments have shown that the reduced gravity aboard the International Space Station (ISS) causes important alterations in Drosophila gene expression. These changes were shown to be intimately linked to environmental space-flight related constraints.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Here, we use an array of different techniques for ground-based simulation of microgravity effects to assess the effect of suboptimal environmental conditions on the gene expression of Drosophila in reduced gravity. A global and integrative analysis, using "gene expression dynamics inspector" (GEDI) self-organizing maps, reveals different degrees in the responses of the transcriptome when using different environmental conditions or microgravity/hypergravity simulation devices. Although the genes that are affected are different in each simulation technique, we find that the same gene ontology groups, including at least one large multigene family related with behavior, stress response or organogenesis, are over represented in each case.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results suggest that the transcriptome as a whole can be finely tuned to gravity force. In optimum environmental conditions, the alteration of gravity has only mild effects on gene expression but when environmental conditions are far from optimal, the gene expression must be tuned greatly and effects become more robust, probably linked to the lack of experience of organisms exposed to evolutionary novel environments such as a gravitational free one.
authors.affiliation: Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas (CSIC), Madrid, Spain. r.herranz@csic.es
authors.forename: Raul
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Herranz
authors.forename: Oliver J
authors.initials: OJ
authors.lastname: Larkin
authors.forename: Richard J A
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Hill
authors.forename: Irene
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Lopez-Vidriero
authors.forename: Jack J W A
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: van Loon
authors.forename: F Javier
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Medina
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004330:Drosophila / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics* / Q000254:growth & development; D029721:Drosophila Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D006112:Gravitation; D008675:Metamorphosis, Biological / Q000235:genetics*; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D029721:Drosophila Proteins